About Us

About the Charis Project

The Charis Project is a 501(c)3 corporation dedicated to protecting children by fostering entrepreneurial solutions that strengthen and empower families and communities, and that provide for the quality care of orphaned and abandoned children.

We address the needs of families in crisis through education, and partnering with them in business initiatives that provide for their physical needs as well as filling the role of hands on training models that can teach poorly educated people business principles.

We are transitioning an existing children’s home from donor dependency to financial self sustainability. The home runs businesses as part of their normal functioning. These businesses support the home and serve as the classroom to train the children in entrepreneurship. These businesses will also be models for the community.

As we reach our goal of helping the families of the children in our care to become healthy enough for the children to return to them, the home will transition even further toward being a support for these families and a community education center.

We work with the at risk children of the world, saturate them in the healing transformation of love and family and equip them with the skills, character and attitudes that will give them the power to be the leaders who will shape the economy of tomorrow and to do it in a manner that is socially responsible and self-sustaining.

The History

The Charis Project was founded by Aaron, Carrien and Wayland Blue. In the beginning it a simple trip to bring training and teaching to hill tribe pastors in a remote area of Northern Thailand. However, seeing the great needs in the region, and the number of children living in appalling conditions, they began fundraising to support those caring for these children in a children's home setting.

However, they quickly realized that simply raising funds to care for children at risk only treats a symptom of the problem without addressing the poverty and social disintegration that causes children to be at risk in the first place. At first their efforts centered around the traditional children’s home model. They worked with the children’s home to implement businesses that could provide the home income and transform the community that they were in. That developed into the vision to create a replicable orphan care model that would be financially self sustaining, [link to self sustaining page] and a resource to aid the transformation of impoverished communities and families in crisis through education in entrepreneurship and positive parenting.

But working exclusively through the children’s home model to bring change to communities is too slow. There are families all around who are just days away from disintegrating and bringing their children to such places.

Most of the children in children’s homes are brought there by family members who are unable to provide for them for some reason, or that view living at the children’s home as a better chance for their children than life in the village. In order to change this, we began working directly with families most at risk of being torn apart by poverty. The best way to protect and care for these kids is to keep families together whenever possible.

To date, The Charis Project has housed, fed, educated, provided medical care for, and protected 60+ at-risk children plus the volunteer workers who help care for them and has provided ongoing training in several different villages and migrant camps.

Why We Do What We Do

The Charis Project is classified as a Christian 501c(3) corporation. Our actions as an organization are informed by our faith. At the foundation of our beliefs is the understanding that we have the privilege, and responsibility, of completing the work of creation in the chaotic world, and advancing the kingdom of heaven – “your kingdom come… on earth as it is in heaven”. The vision the Bible paints of what that is like informs our work and our ultimate objectives as an organization.

In the kingdom of heaven families aren’t torn apart by poverty.

In the kingdom of heaven children don’t die of malnutrition.

In the kingdom of heaven children aren’t abused and commoditized.

In the kingdom of heaven people don’t live in fear of mistreatment and violence because of their race, or beliefs.

In the kingdom of heaven the lonely and abandoned are put into families.

In the kingdom of heaven all are loved, and all are welcome.

In the kingdom of heaven there is freedom, there is life, and there is light.

Operating in Thailand as a ministry of COC Foundation

From our articles of incorporation

“The specific purpose of this corporation shall be to embody and share the good news of Jesus Christ among refugee communities … in Northern Thailand, by, among other things, charitable giving of necessary and effective education, practical skills, and material support and assistance to indigenous Christian leaders operating in Northern Thailand with a particular focus and emphasis on caring for and nurturing poor, distressed and orphaned refugee children, in dedicated children’s homes as well as in support for families, and providing them with the spiritual and physical means to bring hope and change to the children, their communities, and the world.”

Rather than granting us privilege, the gifts we have all received give us the responsibility to leave this world better than we found it.